The Hubble Ultra Deep Field Image (see description on the right, below)

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field Image
(10,000 galaxies in an area 1% of the apparent size of the moon -- see description on the right, below)

Friday, March 10, 2017

2017 March

AEA Astronomy Club Newsletter March 2017

Contents
AEA Astronomy Club News & Calendar p.1
Video(s) & Picture(s) of the Month p. 2
Astronomy News p. 8
General Calendar p. 14
    Colloquia, lectures, mtgs. p. 14
    Observing p. 17
Useful Links p. 18
About the Club p. 19

Club News & Calendar.

Club Calendar

Club Meeting Schedule:
2 March
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
"Getting Your Hands on Real Astronomy Data"
Dr. Luisa Rebull, Caltech/IPAC, IRSA, SSC
(A1/1735)
6 April
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
Pizza & Gemini (Exo-)Planet Imager, Sloane Wiktorowicz, Aerospace
(A1/1735)




AEA Astronomy Club meetings are now on 1st  Thursdays at 11:45 am (except Feb. 2 which will start at 12:00).  For all of 2017, the meeting room is A1/1735. 


Club News:  

We have scheduled the following presentation for our Thursday, March 2 club mtg. (11:45am, A1/1735):

"Getting Your Hands on Real Astronomy Data"

Dr. Luisa Rebull,
Research Scientist, Infrared Science Archive (IRSA) and Spitzer Science Center (SSC), Caltech/IPAC

Abstract:
Did you have a cloudy night but still want to do some astronomy? Do you really want to see the sky tonight but you also like running water and A/C? There is a ton of research-quality astronomy data available to you *right now*. You just need to know how to get access to it! I?ll cover a few of the many ways that you can get access to real data, from citizen science web-based projects to FITS files. I?ll also cover a few basics of how to interpret astronomy images, which you may already know from your own telescope imaging projects.

Here is the link to her presentation charts & other useful information:  http://web.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/rebull/outr/datalinks.html


We have reserved the night of Sept. 23 (3 days after new moon) on the Mt. Wilson 100-inch telescope this year, and have already filled the group size limit of 18.  However, we generally have some late cancellations, and will keep a waiting list for that purpose.

We have received the annual AEA budget allotment, to the amount requested, and will now make final determination as to purchases to be made, especially considering the Aug. 21 eclipse expedition.

Here are pictures from an astronomy night STEM event at Smith Elementary School in Lawndale on March 1 that our club supported, together with the South Bay Astronomical Society.

 





Astronomy Video(s) & Picture(s) of the Month
(from Astronomy Picture of the Day, APOD: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html

VIDEO: Four Planets Orbiting Star HR 8799 
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap170201.html
Video Credit & CC BY License: J. Wang (UC Berkeley) & C. Marois (Herzberg Astrophysics), NExSS (NASA), Keck Obs.
Explanation: Does life exist outside our Solar System? To help find out, NASA has created the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS) to better locate and study distant star systems that hold hope of harboring living inhabitants. A new observational result from a NExSS collaboration is the featured time-lapse video of recently discovered planets orbiting the star HR 8799. The images for the video were taken over seven years from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Four exoplanets appear as white dots partially circling their parent star, purposefully occluded in the center. The central star HR 8799 is slightly larger and more massive than our Sun, while each of the planets is thought to be a few times the mass of Jupiter. The HR 8799 system lies about 130 light years away toward the constellation of the Flying Horse (Pegasus). Research will now continue on whether any known or potential planets -- or even moons of these planets -- in the HR 8799 star system could harbor life.
VIDEO:  An Active Night over the Magellan Telescopes https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap170221.html
 Image Credit & Copyright: Yuri Beletsky (Carnegie Las Campanas Observatory, TWAN); 
Music Credit & License: Airglow by Club 220
Explanation: The night sky is always changing. Featured here are changes that occurred over a six hour period in late 2014 June behind the dual 6.5-meter Magellan Telescopes at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. The initial red glow on the horizon is airglow, a slight cooling of high air by the emission of specific colors of light. Bands of airglow are also visible throughout the time-lapse video. Early in the night, car headlights flash on the far left. Satellites quickly shoot past as they circle the Earth and reflect sunlight. A long and thin cloud passes slowly overhead. The Small Magellanic Cloud rises on the left, while the expansive central band of our Milky Way Galaxy arches and pivots as the Earth rotates. As the night progresses, the Magellan telescopes swivel and stare as they explore pre-determined patches of the night sky. Every night, every sky changes differently, even though the phenomena at play are usually the same.
Four Quasar Images Surround a Galaxy Lens 
 Image Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, Sherry Suyu et al.
Explanation: An odd thing about the group of lights near the center is that four of them are the same distant quasar. This is because the foreground galaxy -- in the center of the quasar images and the featured image -- is acting like a choppy gravitational lens. A perhaps even odder thing is that by watching these background quasars flicker, you can estimate the expansion rate of the universe. That is because the flicker timing increases as the expansion rate increases. But to some astronomers, the oddest thing of all is that these multiply imaged quasars indicate a universe that is expanding a bit faster than has been estimated by different methods that apply to the early universe. And that is because ... well, no one is sure why. Reasons might include an unexpected distribution of dark matter, some unexpected effect of gravity, or something completely different. Perhaps future observations and analyses of this and similarly lensed quasar images will remove these oddities.
 
 
Seven Worlds for TRAPPIST-1 
Illustration Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Spitzer Space Telescope, Robert Hurt (Spitzer, Caltech)
Explanation: Seven worlds orbit the ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1, a mere 40 light-years away. In May 2016 astronomers using the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) announced the discovery of three planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system. Just announced, additional confirmations and discoveries by the Spitzer Space Telescope and supporting ESO ground-based telescopes have increased the number of known planets to seven. The TRAPPIST-1 planets are likely all rocky and similar in size to Earth, the largest treasure trove of terrestrial planetsever detected around a single star. Because they orbit very close to their faint, tiny star they could also have regions where surface temperatures allow for the presence of liquid water, a key ingredient for life. Their tantalizing proximity to Earth makes them prime candidates for future telescopic explorations of the atmospheres of potentially habitable planets. All seven worlds appear in this artist's illustration, an imagined view from a fictionally powerful telescope near planet Earth. Planet sizes and relative positions are drawn to scale for the Spitzer observations. The system's inner planets are transiting their dim, red, nearly Jupiter-sized parent star.

The Calabash Nebula from Hubble 
 Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble, MAST; Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt
Explanation: Fast expanding gas clouds mark the end for a central star in the Calabash Nebula. The once-normal star has run out of nuclear fuel, causing the central regions to contract into a white dwarf. Some of the liberated energy causes the outer envelope of the star to expand. In this case, the result is a photogenic proto-planetary nebula. As the million-kilometer per hour gas rams into the surrounding interstellar gas, a supersonic shock front forms where ionized hydrogen and nitrogen glow blue. Thick gas and dust hide the dying central star. The Calabash Nebula, also known as the Rotten Egg Nebula and OH231.8+4.2, will likely develop into a full bipolar planetary nebula over the next 1000 years. The nebula, featured here, is about 1.4 light-years in extent and located about 5000 light-years away toward the constellation of Puppis.

The Porpoise Galaxy from Hubble 
 Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble, HLA; Reprocessing & Copyright: Raul Villaverde
Explanation: What's happening to this spiral galaxy? Just a few hundred million years ago, NGC 2936, the upper of the two large galaxies shown, was likely a normal spiral galaxy -- spinning, creating stars -- and minding its own business. But then it got too close to the massive elliptical galaxy NGC 2937 below and took a dive. Dubbed the Porpoise Galaxy for its iconic shape, NGC 2936 is not only being deflected but also being distorted by the close gravitational interaction. A burst of young blue stars forms the nose of the porpoise toward the right of the upper galaxy, while the center of the spiral appears as an eye. Alternatively, the galaxy pair, together known as Arp 142, look to some like a penguin protecting an egg. Either way, intricate dark dust lanes and bright blue star streams trail the troubled galaxy to the lower right. The featured re-processed imageshowing Arp 142 in unprecedented detail was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope last year. Arp 142 lies about 300 million light years away toward the constellation, coincidently, of the Water Snake (Hydra). In a billion years or so the two galaxies will likely merge into one larger galaxy.

Milky Way with Airglow Australis 
Image Credit & Copyright: Yuri Beletsky (Carnegie Las Campanas Observatory, TWAN)
Explanation: Captured last April after sunset on a Chilean autumn night an exceptionally intense airglow flooded this scene. The panoramic skyscape is also filled with stars, clusters, and nebulae along the southern Milky Way including the Large and Small Magellanic clouds. Originating at an altitude similar to aurorae, the luminous airglow is due to chemiluminescence, the production of light through chemical excitation. Commonly recorded with a greenish tinge by sensitive digital cameras, both red and green airglow emission here is predominately from atmospheric oxygen atoms at extremely low densities and has often been present in southern hemisphere nights during the last few years. Like the Milky Way on that dark night the strong airglow was visible to the eye, but seen without color. Mars, Saturn, and bright star Antares in Scorpius form the celestial triangle anchoring the scene on the left. The road leads toward the 2,600 meter high mountain Cerro Paranal and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescopes.


Astronomy News:
(from http://esciencenews.com/topics/astronomy.space)

Vadim Sadovski/Shutterstock.com

Scientists Are About to Switch on a Telescope That Could Photograph a Black Hole's Event Horizon

We're about to peer into the abyss.
FIONA MACDONALD
17 FEB 2017
Black holes are among the most fascinating objects in the known Universe. But despite the fact that they're suspected to lurk at the centre of most galaxies, the reality is that no one has ever been able to actually photograph one.
That's because black holes, as their name implies, are very, very dark. They're so massive that they irreversibly consume everything that crosses their event horizon, including light, making them impossible to photograph. But that could be about to change, when a new telescope network switches on in April this year.
Called the Event Horizon Telescope, the new device is made up of a network of radio receivers located across the planet, including at the South Pole, in the US, Chile, and the French alps.
The network will be switched on between 5 and 14 April, and the results will put Einstein's theory of general relativity through its paces like never before.
The Event Horizon Telescope works using a technique known as very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI), which means the network of receivers will focus in on radio waves emitted by a particular object in space at one time.
For the black hole, they'll be focussing on radio waves with a wavelength of 1.3 mm (230 GHz), which gives them the best chance of piercing through any clouds of gas and dust blocking the black hole.
And because there are so many of these antennae all tuned in on a single spot, the resolution of the telescope should be 50 microarcseconds. To put that into perspective, it's the equivalent of being able to see a grapefruit on the surface of the Moon
That's important, because the first target will be the huge black hole at the centre of our galaxy, called Sagittarius A*, which is actually only the size of a pinprick in our night sky.
We've never directly observed Sagittarius A*, but researchers know it exists because of the way it influences the orbit of nearby stars.
Based on the behaviour of these stars, researchers predict that the black hole is likely about 4 million times more massive than our Sun, but with an event horizon diameter of just 20 million km (12.4 million miles) or so across.
At a distance of around 26,000 light-years away from Earth, that makes it a pretty small target.
But the Event Horizon Telescope will aim to observe the immediate environment around the black hole, and it should be able to get enough resolution to see the black hole itself.
"There's great excitement," project leader Sheperd Doeleman from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics told Jonathan Amos at the BBC this week.
"In April we're going to make the observations that we think have the first real chance of bringing a black hole's event horizon into focus."
So what can we expect to see if the project is successful?
The researchers predict the black hole will look like bright ring of light around a dark blob.
The light is being emitted by gas and dust particles that are accelerated to high speeds just before they're ripped apart and consumed by the black hole. The dark blob would be the shadow cast over that chaos.
But if Einstein was right, we should see more of a crescent of light than a ring - because a dramatic Doppler effect should make the material moving towards Earth appear much brighter.
"Hopefully, it will look like a crescent - it won't look like a ring," team member Feryal Özel said in a press conference last year. "The rest of the ring will also emit, but what you will brightly pick up is a crescent."
If the team is able to measure the dark shadow cast by the black hole, that will be huge, because general relativity makes some pretty specific predictions about what size it should be, based on how much the black hole should bend space-time.
"We know exactly what general relativity predicts for that size," said Özel. "Get to the edge of a black hole, and the general relativity tests you can perform are qualitatively and quantitatively different."
What happens if we see something else? Doeleman told Amos that it's definitely a possibility, and it would shake up the world of physics as we know it.
"As I've said before, it's never a good idea to bet against Einstein, but if we did see something that was very different from what we expect we would have to reassess the theory of gravity," he said. 
"I don't expect that is going to happen, but anything could happen and that's the beauty of it."
Given all the data researchers will need to process, we shouldn't expect the first images of a black hole until the end of the year, or even the start of 2018. And that's assuming there's good enough weather to get a clear picture in the April viewing window.
But when those first pictures come in, it's going to be a pretty exciting moment for humanity.
"One thing that could excite the public almost as much as a Pluto flyby would be a picture of a black hole, up close and personal," Ó¦zel said at the 227th meeting of the American Astronomical Society last year.


Scientists estimate solar nebula's lifetime

Study finds the swirling gas disk disappeared within the solar system's first 4 million years

Date:
February 10, 2017
Source:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Summary:
Scientists have estimated the lifetime of the solar nebula -- a key stage during which much of the solar system evolution took shape. This new estimate suggests that the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn must have formed within the first 4 million years of the solar system's formation.

Artist's concept of a planet in a nearby star's dusty, planet-forming disc.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

About 4.6 billion years ago, an enormous cloud of hydrogen gas and dust collapsed under its own weight, eventually flattening into a disk called the solar nebula. Most of this interstellar material contracted at the disk's center to form the sun, and part of the solar nebula's remaining gas and dust condensed to form the planets and the rest of our solar system.
Now scientists from MIT and their colleagues have estimated the lifetime of the solar nebula -- a key stage during which much of the solar system evolution took shape.
This new estimate suggests that the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn must have formed within the first 4 million years of the solar system's formation. Furthermore, they must have completed gas-driven migration of their orbital positions by this time.
"So much happens right at the beginning of the solar system's history," says Benjamin Weiss, professor of earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences at MIT. "Of course the planets evolve after that, but the large-scale structure of the solar system was essentially established in the first 4 million years."
Weiss and MIT postdoc Huapei Wang, the first author of this study, report their results today in the journal Science. Their co-authors are Brynna Downey, Clement Suavet, and Roger Fu from MIT; Xue-Ning Bai of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Jun Wang and Jiajun Wang of Brookhaven National Laboratory; and Maria Zucolotto of the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro.
Spectacular recorders
By studying the magnetic orientations in pristine samples of ancient meteorites that formed 4.563 billion years ago, the team determined that the solar nebula lasted around 3 to 4 million years. This is a more precise figure than previous estimates, which placed the solar nebula's lifetime at somewhere between 1 and 10 million years.
The team came to its conclusion after carefully analyzing angrites, which are some of the oldest and most pristine of planetary rocks. Angrites are igneous rocks, many of which are thought to have erupted onto the surface of asteroids very early in the solar system's history and then quickly cooled, freezing their original properties -- including their composition and paleomagnetic signals -- in place.
Scientists view angrites as exceptional recorders of the early solar system, particularly as the rocks also contain high amounts of uranium, which they can use to precisely determine their age.
"Angrites are really spectacular," Weiss says. "Many of them look like what might be erupting on Hawaii, but they cooled on a very early planetesimal."
Weiss and his colleagues analyzed four angrites that fell to Earth at different places and times.
"One fell in Argentina, and was discovered when a farm worker was tilling his field," Weiss says. "It looked like an Indian artifact or bowl, and the landowner kept it by this house for about 20 years, until he finally decided to have it analyzed, and it turned out to be a really rare meteorite."
The other three meteorites were discovered in Brazil, Antarctica, and the Sahara Desert. All four meteorites were remarkably well-preserved, having undergone no additional heating or major compositional changes since they originally formed.
Measuring tiny compasses
The team obtained samples from all four meteorites. By measuring the ratio of uranium to lead in each sample, previous studies had determined that the three oldest formed around 4.563 billion years ago. The researchers then measured the rocks' remnant magnetization using a precision magnetometer in the MIT Paleomagnetism Laboratory.
"Electrons are little compass needles, and if you align a bunch of them in a rock, the rock becomes magnetized," Weiss explains. "Once they're aligned, which can happen when a rock cools in the presence of a magnetic field, then they stay that way. That's what we use as records of ancient magnetic fields."
When they placed the angrites in the magnetometer, the researchers observed very little remnant magnetization, indicating there was very little magnetic field present when the angrites formed.
The team went a step further and tried to reconstruct the magnetic field that would have produced the rocks' alignments, or lack thereof. To do so, they heated the samples up, then cooled them down again in a laboratory-controlled magnetic field.
"We can keep lowering the lab field and can reproduce what's in the sample," Weiss says. "We find only very weak lab fields are allowed, given how little remnant magnetization is in these three angrites."
Specifically, the team found that the angrites' remnant magnetization could have been produced by an extremely weak magnetic field of no more than 0.6 microteslas, 4.563 billion years ago, or, about 4 million years after the start of the solar system.
In 2014, Weiss' group analyzed other ancient meteorites that formed within the solar system's first 2 to 3 million years, and found evidence of a magnetic field that was about 10-100 times stronger -- about 5-50 microtesla.
"It's predicted that once the magnetic field drops by a factor of 10-100 in the inner solar system, which we've now shown, the solar nebula goes away really quickly, within 100,000 years," Weiss says. "So even if the solar nebula hadn't disappeared by 4 million years, it was basically on its way out."
The planets align
The researchers' new estimate is much more precise than previous estimates, which were based on observations of faraway stars.
"What's more, the angrites' paleomagnetism constrains the lifetime of our own solar nebula, while astronomical observations obviously measure other faraway solar systems," Wang adds. "Since the solar nebula lifetime critically affects the final positions of Jupiter and Saturn, it also affects the later formation of the Earth, our home, as well as the formation of other terrestrial planets."
Now that the scientists have a better idea of how long the solar nebula persisted, they can also narrow in on how giant planets such as Jupiter and Saturn formed. Giant planets are mostly made of gas and ice, and there are two prevailing hypotheses for how all this material came together as a planet. One suggests that giant planets formed from the gravitational collapse of condensing gas, like the sun did. The other suggests they arose in a two-stage process called core accretion, in which bits of material smashed and fused together to form bigger rocky, icy bodies. Once these bodies were massive enough, they could have created a gravitational force that attracted huge amounts of gas to ultimately form a giant planet.
According to previous predictions, giant planets that form through gravitational collapse of gas should complete their general formation within 100,000 years. Core accretion, in contrast, is typically thought to take much longer, on the order of 1 to several million years. Weiss says that if the solar nebula was around in the first 4 million years of solar system formation, this would give support to the core accretion scenario, which is generally favored among scientists.
"The gas giants must have formed by 4 million years after the formation of the solar system," Weiss says. "Planets were moving all over the place, in and out over large distances, and all this motion is thought to have been driven by gravitational forces from the gas. We're saying all this happened in the first 4 million years."
This research was supported, in part, by NASA and a generous gift from Thomas J. Peterson, Jr.
Story Source:
Materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Original written by Jennifer Chu. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

 General Calendar:

Colloquia, Lectures, Seminars, Meetings, Open Houses & Tours:

Colloquia:  Carnegie (Tues. 4pm), UCLA, Caltech (Wed. 4pm), IPAC (Wed. 12:15pm) & other Pasadena (daily 12-4pm):  http://obs.carnegiescience.edu/seminars/ 
Carnegie astronomy lectures – only 4 per year in the Spring www.obs.carnegiescience.edu.  Visit www.huntington.org for directions.  For more information about the Carnegie Observatories or this lecture series, please contact Reed Haynie.  . Click here for more information.
2 March
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
"Getting Your Hands on Real Astronomy Data"
Dr. Luisa Rebull, Caltech/IPAC, IRSA, SSC
(A1/1735)






3 March
Friday Night 7:30PM SBAS  Monthly General Meeting
in the Planetarium at El Camino College (16007 Crenshaw Bl. In Torrance)
Topic:  TBD

March 9 & 10 The von Kármán Lecture Series: 2017
The Cold Atom Laboratory Mission: The Coldest Spot in the Universe

The Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) is a multi-user facility for the study of ultra-cold quantum gases. CAL is scheduled to launch in August of 2017 and then be installed by astronauts into the Destiny Module of the International Space Station (ISS). The instrument uses the techniques of laser, RF, and microwave evaporative cooling to create another state of matter known as a Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC). Facilitated by the microgravity environment of the ISS, CAL will achieve temperatures of less than 100 picoKelvin, a billion times colder than the vacuum of space, making the ISS the home of the Coldest Spot in the known Universe. CAL will explore the nature of gravity, dark energy, giving scientists access to an unexplored quantum realm. To this end, our first team of flight investigators includes three Nobel Prize winners in Physics; Eric Cornell, Bill Philips, and Wolfgang Ketterle. CAL also serves as an in space technology demonstration mission for ultra-stable clocks, precision inertial sensors, and quantum computing.



http://Coldatomlab.jpl.nasa.gov
Speaker:
Dr. Anita Sengupta, CAL Project Manager
Dr. Robert Thompson, CAL Project Scientist

Webcast:
Click here to watch the event live on Ustream (or archived after the event)
Locations:
Thursday, March 9, 2017, 7pm
The von Kármán Auditorium at JPL
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena, CA
› Directions

Friday, March 10, 2017, 7pm
The Vosloh Forum at Pasadena City College
1570 East Colorado Blvd.
Pasadena, CA
› Directions
Webcast:
 We offer two options to view the live streaming of our webcast on Thursday:
› 1) Ustream with real-time web chat to take public questions.
› 2) Flash Player with open captioning
If you don't have Flash Player, you can download for free here.



13 Feb
LAAS LAAS General Meeting.
Griffith Observatory
Event Horizon Theater
8:00 PM to 10:00 PM

12 March  Post-doctoral fellow Roger Fu

The water-rich interior of dwarf planet Ceres


Location: Geology 3656
Time: 2:30PM
By convention, solid solar system bodies are often classified as rocky (e.g., the Earth, the Moon, and Mars) or icy (e.g., Pluto and most satellites of the gas giants). However, new data from the NASA Dawn spacecraft has revealed that the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt at 940 km diameter, does not fall neatly into these categories. He will talk about how the morphology and spectroscopy of the surface point to a composition of less than 30% water ice with the remaining >70% consisting of rock and salts. Even so, intriguing features observed on Ceres suggest localized regions enriched in sub-surface ice and, possibly, the existence of an ancient global ocean during its early history. Picture credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

6 April
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
Pizza & Gemini (Exo-)Planet Imager, Sloane Wiktorowicz, Aerospace
(A1/1735)

Observing:

The following data are from the 2017 Observer’s Handbook, and Sky & Telescope’s 2017 Skygazer’s Almanac & monthly Sky at a Glance.

Current sun & moon rise/set/phase data for L.A.:  http://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/usa/los-angeles

Sun, Moon & Planets for February:

  

Moon: March 5 1st quarter, March 12 full, March 20 last quarter, March 28 new                 
Planets: Venus at dusk in WNW to March 22, then dawn ENE.  Mars visible after dusk in the west.  Mercury  visible March 16-April 9 dusk WNW.  Saturn early morning in the southeast. Jupiter late evening to dawn, east to WSW.
Other Events:


4 March
LAAS Public  Star Party: Griffith Observatory Grounds 2-10pm


1,8,15,22 March
LAAS The Garvey Ranch Observatory is open to the public every Wednesday evening from 7:30 PM to 10 PM. Go into the dome to use the 8 Inch Refractor or observe through one of our telescopes on the lawn. Visit our workshop to learn how you can build your own telescope, grind your own mirror, or sign up for our free seasonal astronomy classes.

Call 213-673-7355 for further information.
Time: 7:30 PM - 10:00 PM
Location: Garvey Ranch Obs. , 781 Orange Ave., Monterey Park, CA 91755


 
18 March
SBAS Saturday Night In Town Dark Sky Observing Session at Ridgecrest Middle School– 28915 North Bay Rd. RPV, Weather Permitting: Please contact Greg Benecke to confirm that the gate will be opened! http://www.sbastro.net/

20 March Vernal Equinox

25 March
SBAS out-of-town Dark Sky observing – contact Greg Benecke to coordinate a location. http://www.sbastro.net/.  

25 March
LAAS Private dark sky  Star Party


Internet Links:

Telescope, Binocular & Accessory Buying Guides


General


Regional (Southern California, Washington, D.C. & Colorado)
Southern California & Beyond Amateur Astronomy Organizations, Observatories & Planetaria
Mt. Wilson Observatory description, history, visiting


About the Club

Club Websites:  Internal (Aerospace): https://aeropedia.aero.org/aeropedia/index.php/Astronomy_Club  It is updated to reflect this newsletter, in addition to a listing of past club mtg. presentations, astronomy news, photos & events from prior newsletters, club equipment, membership & constitution.  We have linked some presentation materials from past mtgs.  Our club newsletters are also being posted to an external blog, “An Astronomical View” http://astronomicalview.blogspot.com/. 

 
Membership.  For information, current dues & application, contact Alan Olson, or see the club website (or Aerolink folder) where a form is also available (go to the membership link/folder & look at the bottom).  Benefits will include use of club telescope(s) & library/software, membership in The Astronomical League, discounts on Sky & Telescope magazine and Observer’s Handbook, field trips, great programs, having a say in club activities, acquisitions & elections, etc.

Committee Suggestions & Volunteers.  Feel free to contact:  Mark Clayson, President & Program Committee Chairman (& acting club VP), TBD Activities Committee Chairman (& club Secretary), or Alan Olson, Resource Committee Chairman (over equipment & library, and club Treasurer).

Mark Clayson,
AEA Astronomy Club President 
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)